


Comrades in Arms

by slimwhistler



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, The House of Eliott
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 20:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6344251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slimwhistler/pseuds/slimwhistler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over cocktails, Phryne muses on her friendship(s) with Beatrice Elliott and Jack Maddox.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comrades in Arms

**Author's Note:**

> So I’ve wanted to do a MFMM/House of Eliott crossover for _ages_ , and after I started rewatching HoE last night this just would _not_ leave me alone. I dashed it off quickly so the characters would stop talking to me so loudly and allow me to get some dissertating done. Therefore it’s absolutely not perfect, but I haven’t posted anything for a while and I really want to, so I am posting before I think better of it. ;-) Please excuse any sloppiness, particularly with tenses; there’s no one to blame for it but me, and who knows, I might come back to clean it up later anyway.
> 
> This can be considered a precursor to my MFMM **Uncharted Territory** series, I suppose, after Jack follows Phryne to England but before (obviously!) they return to Melbourne. Knowledge of **House of Eliott** is helpful but not absolutely essential, I don’t think. I hope it isn’t too confusing, what with the two Jacks, but I tried to make it as clear as possible…please forgive any awkwardness that results from that. ♥

Phryne could see that Jack was becoming a bit tired of London’s social whirl, so she arranged for them to have dinner with her friends Beatrice Eliott and Jack Maddox. She thought the two Jacks would get on, while the intimate setting of a family dinner would also allow _her_ Jack an opportunity to relax a bit.

When the evening came, Maddox was late, dashing into the drawing room as she and Jack were finishing cocktails with Beatrice. Introductions were made as Maddox finished doing up his cuffs, but nobody minded. “I’m terribly sorry, everyone,” Maddox apologized, dropping a kiss on his wife’s cheek, “but my committee meeting ran far later than I was expecting. I’ve looked in on the children, Bea,” he told Beatrice, “and all’s quiet for now, it seems.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Beatrice sighed with relief. “Hughie’s teething, poor darling,” she explained, “and he’s been terribly fractious.” Photographs of Lucy and little Hughie were duly produced and admired by the guests, genuinely on Jack’s part and slightly perfunctorily on Phryne’s, though she hoped it didn’t show too much. As pleased as she was for her friends, she simply couldn’t bring herself to be excited over other people’s children.

“Imagine, my old chum, gad-about society photographer Jack Maddox, now a sober and respectable MP able to produce family snaps on demand,” she teased, sinking back into the sofa. “Who’d have thought it in the old days, darling!”

“Certainly not I!” Maddox returned, smiling, perfectly in charity with her. Beatrice, however, straightened slightly, her eyes sparking.

“Oh, there’s no need to glare daggers at me, Bea darling… goodness, I’d forgotten how **_good_** you are at that… anything like _that_ was over before you even began to work for Jack.”

It was thanks to her mother that Phryne had met Jack (“Really, he takes the most _marvelous_ photographs, dear; you simply _must_ go and see him!”). He’d flirted with her outrageously, she’d vamped him right back, and once they’d taken each other’s measure they’d settled down to a glass of champagne in utter accord. She’d only been back in London for a short time then, and it had been a relief to be able to drop her guard a bit with someone who was playing the dilettante for many of the same reasons as she was. They’d seen each other socially, mostly at events attended by Daphne Haycock and her crowd, and there _had_ been a few nights together, but those had been more about kinship and comfort than passion. Attraction, certainly, for she hadn’t been blind, and he’d been a generous and tender lover besides. Added to that, there’d been such _kindness_ in him under the surface charm that she had never felt afraid, and that had been a balm after Rene. They’d drifted apart after he began to take his photography more seriously and then moved on to filmmaking, but she’d always thought of him fondly and had been glad that when he’d fallen head over heels for someone that it had been someone like Beatrice. 

She only got to know Beatrice properly in the wake of the scandal of Evie’s affair with Lord Montford, when she’d made a point of patronizing the House of Eliott, because she’d certainly not been willing to stand by and watch a fine business go under for something like that, not if she could help it! In Bea she’d found a kindred spirit of another sort: she’d appreciated the other woman’s forthright manner, admired her business (and fashion!) sense, and had understood her fierce protectiveness of her younger sister rather more viscerally than she’d cared to admit at the time.

Looking at her two friends now, Phryne was glad they’d found their way back to one another after their separation, and now seemed truly content in what appeared an equal partnership. Glancing at _her_ Jack, smiling in wry, sympathetic amusement at the effects of Phryne’s teasing (because of course she’d filled him in on her history with the two!), she didn’t know whether the same might be in store for both of them, or indeed if she wanted it to be, but part of her gladdened at the evidence that it was possible.

“Besides, Bea,” she continued, looking from her to Maddox with a fond smile, “it was _never_ anything serious. If you’ll pardon the double entendre just this once, we were more comrades in arms than anything.”

Bea, who knew of her time in France, relaxed, looking between Phryne and her husband with the instant compassion that was the rather unexpected and endearing counterpoint to the pricklier aspects of her nature. She nodded, her lips curving faintly, and Maddox tipped his glass at Phryne in salute before directing a warm, steady gaze at his wife. Bea’s color rose slightly as she returned the gaze in kind, and for a brief moment Phryne wondered how the two would make it through dinner, even with Bea’s nearly faultless sense of propriety. But then she chanced a look at _her_ Jack, and realized that her friends weren’t the only couple at the table who would be having such a problem. She smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> So there you go. For the purposes of this fic, imagine (as I did) that Evie and Daniel are in Paris. And yes, Hughie _is_ named for Jack Maddox’s best friend who rescued him in the trenches, among other things. 
> 
> Please do let me know if you enjoyed!


End file.
